By Richard Mabey Jr.

There was a certain magic in the Summer of 1964. I was 10 years old and had just completed 

Mrs. Raimo’s fifth grade class. When I had started the fifth grade, Mrs. Raimo was known to us as Miss DelGiorno. In the early Spring of 1964, Miss DelGiorno announced to all of us that she was getting married on the weekend and that we would have a substitute teacher for the next week. I was shocked and broken hearted. For if truth be told, I had an incurable crush on Miss DelGiorno and now she was getting married!

Lenny Esposito was just about the biggest wise guy in all of Chapel Hill School. As fate would have it, Lenny sat next to me in Miss DelGiorno’s fifth grade class. Yes, even at 67, I still more fondly remember my old fifth grade teacher as Miss DelGiorno. 

Not only was Lenny Esposito the biggest wise guy in all of Chapel Hill School, he was also the biggest braggard. He once told a group of us boys that his father was an FBI Agent and that his father had a special scope machine, in his basement, that could see through walls. Even though I knew that Lenny was full of donkey dust, there was a tiny part of me that wondered if there was any truth to Lenny’s outrageous tall tales.

It was the era of metal lunch boxes, that came complete with a little thermos. I remember that I had a Popeye the Sailor Man lunchbox, that I had from the third grade. Lenny had a lunch box with a picture of Frankenstein on it. Fate and Destiny are such strange twins. One lunch time, Lenny sat across from my best friend, Stuart Steinhauser and I. In a brief moment of being kind and decent, Lenny showed us what he had stored in his lunch box.

There, setting beneath his wax paper covered peanut butter and jelly sandwich, was a small paper bag. Lenny then looked at Stuart and I with his wise guy smirk, “betcha you chumps wanna know what’s inside this bag?” To Lenny Esposito, we were all chumps. He rarely called any of the other boys by their names. We were all chumps to Lenny, because he was the self-appointed coolest kid in all of Chapel Hill School.

“I’ll tell ya’ what, for a nickel, I’ll let ya’ see what’s in this bag. Believe me, ya’ won’t be disappointed,” Lenny told us. Lenny always spoke out of the corner of his mouth. He loved to watch the old gangster movies and he worked very hard to speak the way he imagined a hard-nosed gangster would talk. So, between Stuart and myself, we came up with the five cents. I cannot remember which one of us put in the extra penny.

Lenny grabbed the five pennies from the table then handed us his paper bag. Stuart held the paper bag and carefully opened it. I took on the role of lookout for any of the teachers walking around the lunchroom. And, to our surprise, there it was. A most incredible sight for sure. There must have been two dozen firecrackers in Lenny’s little brown bag. 

Then to our surprise, Lenny offered us the deal of a lifetime. “Tell ya’ what chumps, for one thin dime, I’ll let you chumps have three of them firecrackers. Ya’ ain’t gonna get a better deal than that. I had all of 12 cents left in my pocket. And, that was reserved for the newest Batman comic book. 

Instinctively, by telepathy, Stuart and I communicated an unspoken agreement and we both took out a nickel from our pants pockets. A cold sweat flowed from the pores of the palms of our hands as Lenny took the two nickels and nodded to Stuart, with his wise guy’s grin, that it was okay to take three firecrackers from the bag. In a flash of millisecond, Stuart put the three firecrackers in his right pants pocket. Stuart folded up the open end of Lenny’s little paper bag and handed it back to Lenny. The deal was done. 

Stuart kept the three firecrackers in a plastic bag, in the wooden box, of his tree fort. Stuart and I agreed that on the Fourth of July, we would light all three firecrackers!

So, fast forward to the eve of the Fourth of July. Stuart came over to my house on the afternoon of the third of July. We set up the old pup tent in the backyard. Stuart had our three firecrackers, hidden in the bottom of his knapsack. The plan was to get up at the crack of dawn, run down the path at the end of Mabey Lane to the old Morris Canal. And, there by the banks of the old canal, we planned on lighting our three firecrackers.

The anticipation, that night, was nerve racking. When the sun began to rise in the east, Stuart and I both instinctively awoken. My heart was pounding like an old bass drum, as Stuart reached into his knapsack and pulled out the three firecrackers, safe and sound in the little plastic bag.

Stuart and I ran down the wooded path to the banks of the old Morris Canal. We ran to the big flat rock, just a few feet from the path along the canal. We sat on the flat rock and Stuart pulled out the three firecrackers from his pants pocket. The sacred moment was here. As we prepared to take a leaping run down the path, Stuart lit one of the firecrackers and we ran with a speed that may very well had shamed the Flash. 

From a few yards away, we waited and waited and waited. Finally, we decided to check on what had happened. When we reached the big flat rock, we saw that the fuse had burnt and so did the paper that the firecracker was wrapped in. Something was wrong. Could it be that Lenny conned us?

After a few moments of discussing the matter, Stuart and I agree to check out one of the other two remaining firecrackers. I ripped open the paper wrapping of the firecracker. To our dismay, our hearts sank at what transpired before our very eyes. Lenny had scammed us. The firecrackers he sold us were nothing more than sawdust wrapped in brightly colored paper.

Sadly, Stuart and I walked home, along the wooded path that early morning of the Fourth of July of 1964. We both had sacrificed buying comic books that week, only to be cheated by the biggest wise guy in all of Chapel Hill School. 

As we reached the end of the wooded path and came upon Mabey Lane, I remember Stuart looking over at me and saying, “we should have known better than to have trusted Lenny Esposito.” I looked over to Stuart and simply replied, “hard lesson to learn.”

Legend had it that we weren’t the only kids who bought into Lenny’s firecracker scam. I often wonder whatever happened to Lenny Esposito. I think it was in the middle of my sophomore year at Boonton High School, that Lenny moved away. None of the other kids really missed him at all. A sad commentary, to say the least. By the eighth grade we all came to know that Lenny’s father was never an FBI Agent, he just did odd jobs here and there. As strange as it may sound, I kind of felt sorry for Lenny.  

I still keep in touch with my old best friend, Stuart. From time to time, in telephone conversations, we’ll recall the time we got scammed by Lenny Esposito. Now, over 50 years later, Lenny’s scam artist legacy is still alive and well. 

Richard Mabey Jr. is a freelance writer. He can be reached at richardmabeyjr@hotmail.com. Please put on the subject line: My Life Publications.